As police reopen the Natalie Wood case, what really happened on the 'Splendour' on November 28, 1981?

What really happened to Natalie Wood? And is a new police investigation likely to provide any fresh answers? Natalie Wood was Robert Wagner’s beautiful wife – they married twice – and a talented actress in her own right who had appeared in notable pictures such as Rebel Without a Cause (1955) and West Side Story (1961), in which she played Maria. She died in mysterious circumstances, drowning in the sea off Santa Catalina island, which lies 30 miles off the coast of southern California, on the night of November 28, 1981. The Los Angeles police now say they have new information and will reopen the case. But I doubt there’s any murky new information to unearth.

The best account is the book Coroner by Thomas T Noguchi MD, published in 1983. Noguchi was the medical examiner who conducted the forensic investigations into the deaths of dozens of stars, including Marilyn Monroe, Robert F Kennedy, Sharon Tate, Janis Joplin, William Holden and John Belushi.

What happened, briefly, was this: Wood spent the evening with Wagner and Christopher Walken, who was their guest for that Thanksgiving weekend. They dined at a restaurant on the northern tip of the island called Doug's Harbour Reef and then went back to the Wagners' yacht, Splendour, to sleep for the night. The actress's lifeless body was found floating face down in the ocean in the early hours of the following morning. Her legs and arms bore numerous bruises. She was wearing a down-filled jacket, flannel nightgown and knee-length wool socks.

The gossip at the time was that there had been a row on the boat, caused, it was speculated, by Wagner’s jealousy of Walken. Wagner and his friends disputed these claims at the time, saying that the three actors had enjoyed a happy dinner. In 2008 Wagner finally spoke about that night. And in his memoir Pieces of My Heart he admitted that there had been jealousy and that there was a fight with Wood. He even said he had smashed a wine bottle on a table.

No one is one hundred per cent certain what Wood did next, but Noguchi thinks she went down from the deck of the Splendour to the dinghy, perhaps to get away because she was angry. There were fingernail scratches on the side of the dingy and abrasions on her cheek which are taken to mean that she untied the boat, but a strong wind blew it away from the yacht, then she lost her balance and plunged into the icy water.

Desperately trying to hold on to the side of the dingy she was swept away rapidly from the safety of the Splendour. She must have shouted out for help, but her cries may have been drowned out by the rock music pumping out of the speakers at a party on the island. She gained all the bruises in her frantic attempts to climb over the slippery rubber sides of the dinghy. Realising she couldn’t manage this, Noguchi speculates, she decided instead to use the dinghy as a float and paddle to shore, kicking with her legs.

The water was so cold, however, that hypothermia drained her of strength. An additonal factor was the alcohol in her system, equivalent, Dr Noguchi estimated, to seven or eight glasses of champagne. This would certainly have impaired her ability to respond well to an emergency. She lost consciousness, and her grip on the boat, and drowned.

It was an accident, simple as that – a very sad accident, because it seems that Natalie may have only been minutes from safety. The boat itself did land safely on the shore of Catalina.